“Pain means that it matters.”
True to form – and perhaps even truer to non-binary lead performer Neen Sever – the third installment of HardWerk’s hybrid gang bang/interview series Ask Me is more than an invitation, it’s a provocation: ask me, challenge me, expose me, make me. For the filmmakers, collaborating with Neen revealed new possibilities for the format, the result a ‘gonzo-meets-psychotherapy’ exploration of identity and interest, where verbal communication is paralleled in visceral expression during a vividly intense industrial gang bang. As the cameras are turned on Neen, first under a leaden Berlin sky and later in the radiance of hot lights, flushed skin, burning handprints and undivided desire, the film finds its playground in the intersection between intellect and instinct, between the psyche and the physical, between ego and alter.
